Sponge music

[Aaron] calls this project “Stochasticity”. It uses two sponges as a musical interface. The performer wears a wrist strap and then draws on the table with water from the sponge to play different notes. You really need to watch the video to fully understand what’s going on here.

We’re guessing that this is Arduino based since some of his other projects are as well. You can try out another quick project of his, an Arduino electromagnetic field detector. Check out video of that after the break.

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23 thoughts on “Sponge music”

The sponges are cool, I like that you can use it visually with the snail trails…

The EMF detector is as dumb as using a uC to blink an LED (I guess it was only included because audrino was mentioned). Simply complimenting NPN and PNP transistors together achieves the same. I found that out for myself as a kid – about 4 (2 ea) have enough gain to detect your hand waving nearby, and if you have a speaker instead of an LED attached you can hear the noise (usually power frequencies, 60/50hz depending where you are)

I have an old stylephone lying on my desk somwere think I will solder a few transisters across the keys with a common colector to the stylus and link the baces with resistors to make a voltage tester of sorts withthe output ailudible not visual then a simple set of transistors to make an initial amplifyer so I can sence the resistance of the water (may cheat and make the water slightly salty)
may use a 555 timer when I dig one out insted of stylephone but it’s good to use what’s at hand (:
Hay presto exactly the same responce but no microprossesor to program wonderful (:

I don’t get how it works. What resistance is changed? How is his body incorporated into the circuit by only a single contact point — isn’t that kind of like sticking one leg of a resistor into a circuit and leaving the other one floating in the air? Or does it use the person like a “hanging resistor” and detect the change in EM noise it picks up? Also, what’s the wrist strap?

You know what would be freaking great, using something on the lines of this like a midi input. You could make the sound so much better. Do the water fountain wall idea and have it lit up with LEDs. That would be absolutely sweet.

I usually scoff at artists making “interactive art”, pretending to be engineers, and making “alternative midi controllers.” That’s what I expected this to be, and I suppose it is to some degree.. But I enjoyed it. The attempt at music was pushing it a bit, but the first third of the video was pretty cool. I especially like the sponge networking.

@LF4 i’m sure the water will only be a slow trickle, and the break from the end to drip into a trough would be enough. even forgoing that, the resistance is between the point the finger is touching, and the point where the other wire is attached, making the distance between them more important then a full circuit made of high resistance water

@supershwa:
the first time i read your comment i thought it said “viola!” because that’s what i was thinking. space the sponges out by fifths instead of octaves and you have half a cello. midi THAT!

doing the same thing but with the person acting as a floating capacitance would be cooler; i actually built something like that last year (based on the liquid level meter). then you don’t even need the wrist strap… or the water, for that matter :P